A total of 931 people including two pregnant women and 26 children arrived at the Sicilian capital Palermo's port on Monday after they were rescued in the southern Mediterranean.
The migrants reached Palermo aboard a Norwegian merchant navy ship and included 64 women and were from Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and sub-Saharan countries in Africa.
The group was met by Palermo's mayor Leoluca Orlando, the city's archbishop Corrado Lorefice, a team of 53 doctors, nurses and cultural mediators and workers from Catholic charity Caritas.
Police were also on hand at Palermo's dock to identify any alleged migrant smugglers and 116 Tunisians who disembarked were expected to be deported.
The Italian Navy plucked the migrants from unseaworthy boats off the Libyan coast in several operations at the weekend.
The Norwegian merchant navy ship used to transport the migrants, the Siem Pilot, was taking part in an operation coordinated by the European Union's borders agency Frontex.
The number of migrants and refugees crossing illegally into Europe has increased fourfold this year compared with 2014 and has topped one million, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said last week.
Most of the more than 1,006,000 asylum-seekers who entered Europe this year arrived by sea according to the IOM.
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